Churp Churp

Subscribe To

Gadget

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Popularly
known for playing Hanna Marin in the hit show “Pretty Little
Liars,” Ashley Benson makes the giant leap to the big screen with
Columbia Pictures' new action-adventure “Pixels.”

Benson
takes on the role of Lady Lisa, the film’s 1980s videogame icon,
star of the fictional game Dojo Quest. “I get to play a videogame
hero – I have two swords and I get to be a badass,” Benson
explains. “I’d never worked with swords before, so that was cool.
Plus, punching and kicking and beating up Josh Gad is always fun.”
(Watch a featurette on Ashley Benson's Lady Lisa below:

In
the film, Josh Gad's character, Ludlow Lamonsoff, is chasing the love
of his life, which is a videogame character “It makes him sound
insane, but he believes in a world where he can co-exist with Lady
Lisa and run away with her,” explains Gad.

“We
wanted Ludlow to be in love with a female video game character from
his childhood. We thought it was really sweet, but also showed that
he’s a little pathetic,” says producer Allen Covert. “There
weren’t a lot of game characters that fit that description so we
came up with Dojo Quest and Lady Lisa. The best part was that we
actually got to make it into a real game that you can play on your
phone.”

Costume
designer Christine Wada’s great challenge was to create the look
for Lady Lisa, the 1980s object of desire for the film’s fictional
game, Dojo Quest. “In the end, there were 222 designs of her
costume and hair,” Wada recalls. The reason it was such a great
challenge was that Lady Lisa had to do so much: “She’s a
character from the 80s, so the design has to feel backdated, but also
work in a modern context. She had to be iconic, but the character
would also have to handle stunts. And the design had to be able to
handle visual effects, so there were certain boundaries that we had
to work within.”

Wada’s
design melds numerous influences: the layered designs of 1980s
swimsuits, crossed with Asian inspirations. “It’s a costume
Ashley can actually move and fight in, but it’s also one that makes
her look like a character that a teenage boy would fall in love
with,” she says.

“I
love the costume so much,” says Benson. “It would be cool to see
girls being Lady Lisa for Halloween.”

In
“Pixels,” as kids in the 1980s, Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler), Will
Cooper (Kevin James), Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad), and Eddie “The
Fire Blaster” Plant (Peter Dinklage) saved the world thousands of
times – at 25 cents a game in the video arcades. Now, they’re
going to have to do it for real.

When
intergalactic aliens discover video feeds of classic arcade games and
misinterpret them as a declaration of war, they attack the Earth,
using the video games as the models for their assaults -- and
now-U.S. President Cooper must call on his old-school arcade friends
to save the world from being destroyed by PAC-MAN™, Donkey Kong™,
Galaga™, Centipede®, and Space Invaders™. Joining them is Lt.
Col. Violet Van Patten (Michelle Monaghan), a specialist supplying
the arcaders with unique weapons to fight the aliens.

Opening
across the Philippines in August 26, “Pixels” is distributed by
Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing
International.